AN 

INAUGURAL LECTURE 



Sontion: C. J. CLAY and SONS, 

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, 

AVE MARIA LANE. 

©lasgofaj: 50, WELLINGTON STREET. 



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i^efaj ^ork: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

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AN 



INAUGURAL LECTURE 



DELIVERED IN THE DIVINITY SCHOOL 

CAMBRIDGE 

ON JANUARY 26, 1903 



BY 

J. B. BURY, M.A. 

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY 



» ■• » > 



CAMBRIDGE: 

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 

1903 






(CambriligE : 



PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 

In saying that I come before you to-day 
with no little trepidation, I am not uttering 
a mere conventional profession of diffidence. 
There are very real reasons for misgiving. 
My predecessor told you how formidable he 
found this chair, illuminated as it is by the 
lustre of the distinguished historian whom he 
succeeded. But if it was formidable then, how 
much more formidable is it to-day ! The terrors 
which it possessed for Lord Acton have been 
enhanced for his successor. 

In a home of historical studies where so 
much thought is spent on their advancement, 
one can hardly hope to say any new thing 
touching those general aspects of history which 
most naturally invite attention in an inaugural 



lecture. It may be appropriate and useful now 
and again to pay a sort of solemn tribute to the 
dignity and authority of a great discipline or 
science, by reciting some of her claims and 
her laws, or by reviewing the measures of her 
dominion ; and on this occasion, in this place, 
it might perhaps seem to be enough to honour 
the science of History in this formal way, 
sprinkling, as it were, with dutiful hands some 
grains of incense on her altar. 

Yet even such a tribute might possess more 
than a formal significance, if we remember how 
recently it i.s — within three generations, three 
short generations — that history began to forsake 
her old irresponsible ways and prepared to 
enter into her kingdom. In the .story of the 
nineteenth century, which has witnessed such 
far-reaching changes in the geography of thought 
and in the apparatus of research, no small nor 
isolated place belongs to the transformation 
and expansion of history. That transformation, 
however, is not yet complete. Its principle is 



7 
not yet universally or unreservedly acknow- 
ledged. It is rejected in many places, or 
ignored, or unrealised. Old envelopes still 
hang tenaciously round the renovated figure, and 
students of history are confused, embarrassed, 
and diverted by her old traditions and associa- 
tions. It has not yet become superfluous to 
insist that history is a science, no less and no 
more ; and some who admit it theoretically 
hesitate to enforce the consequences which it 
involves. It is therefore, I think, almost in- 
cumbent on a professor to define, at the very 
outset, his attitude to the transformation of the 
idea of history which is being gradually accom- 
plished ; and an inaugural address offers an 
opportunity which, if he feels strongly the 
importance of the question, he will not care 
to lose. 

And moreover I venture to think that it 
may be useful and stimulating for those who 
are beginning historical studies to realise vividly 
and clearly that the transformation which those 



8 

studies are undergoing is itself a great event 
in the history of the world, — that we are 
ourselves in the very middle of it, that we are 
witnessing and may share in the accomplish- 
ment of a change which will have a vast 
influence on future cycles of the world. I wish 
that I had been enabled to realise this when 
I first began to study history. I think it is 
important for all historical students alike — not 
only for those who may be drawn to make 
history the special work of their lives, but also 
for those who study it as part of a liberal 
education — to be fully alive and awake to the 
revolution which is slowly and silently pro- 
gressing. It seems especially desirable that 
those who are sensible of the importance of 
the change and sympathize with it should 
declare and emphasize it ; just because it is 
less patent to the vision and is more perplexed 
by ancient theories and traditions, than those 
kindred revolutions which have been effected 
simultaneously in other branches of knowledge. 



9 

History has really been enthroned and en- 
sphered among the sciences ; but the particular 
nature of her influence, her time-honoured 
association with literature, and other circum- 
stances, have acted as a sort of vague cloud, 
half concealing from men's eyes her new 
position in the heavens. 

The proposition that before the beginning 
of the last century the study of history was 
' not scientific may be sustained in spite of a few 
exceptions. The works of permanent value, 
such as those of Muratori, Ducange, Tillemont, 
were achieved by dint of most laborious and 
■ conscientious industry, which commands our 
highest admiration and warmest gratitude : but 
it must be admitted that their criticism was 
sporadic and capricious. It was the criticism 
of sheer learning. A few stand on a higher 
level in so far as they were really alive to the 
need of bringing reason and critical doubt 
to bear on the material, but the systematized 
method which distinguishes a science was 



lO 

beyond the vision of all, except a few like 
Mabillon. Erudition has now been supple- 
mented by scientific method, and we owe the 
change to Germany. Among those who brought 
' it about, the names of Niebuhr and Ranke 
are pre-eminent But there is another name 
which historical students should be slow to 
forget, the name of one who, though not a 
historian but a philologist, nevertheless gave 
a powerful stimulus to the introduction of 
critical methods which are now universally ap- 
plied. Six years before the eighteenth century 
closed a modest book appeared at Halle, of 
which it is perhaps hardly a grave exaggeration 
to say that it is one of half-a-dozen which in the 
last three hundred years have exercised most 
effective influence upon thought. The work 
I mean is Wolf's Prolegomena to Homer. It 
launched upon the world a new engine — donum 
exitiale Minervae — which was soon to menace 
the walls of many a secure citadel. It gave 
historians the idea of a systematic and minute 



1 1 

method of analysing their sources, which soon 
developed into the microscopic criticism, now 
recognised as indispensable. 

All truths (to modify a saying of Plato) 
require the most exact methods ; and closely 
connected with the introduction of a new 
method was the elevation of the standard of 
truth. The idea of a scrupulously exact con- 
formity to facts was fixed, refined, and canon- 
ized ; and the critical method was one of the 
means to secure it. There was indeed no his- 
torian since the beginning of things who did not 
profess that his sole aim was to present to his 
readers untainted and unpainted truth. But 
the axiom was loosely understood and inter- 
preted, and the notion of truth was elastic. It 
might be difficult to assign to Puritanism and 
Rationalism and other causes their respective 
parts in crystallizing that strict discrimination 
of the true and the false which is now so familiar 
to us that we can hardly understand insensibility 
to the distinction. It would be a most fruitful 



12 

investigation to trace from the earliest ages the 
history of public opinion in regard to the mean- 
ing of falsehood and the obligation of veracity. 
About twenty years ago a German made a 
contribution to the subject by examining the 
evidence for the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, 
and he showed how different were the views 
which men held then as to truth-telling and 
lying from those which are held to-day. More- 
over, so long as history was regarded as an art, 
the sanctions of truth and accuracy could not 
be severe. The historians of ancient Rome 
display what historiography can become when 
it is associated with rhetoric. Though we may 
point to individual writers who had a high ideal 
of accuracy at various ages, it was not till the 
scientific period began that laxity in representing 
facts came to be branded as criminal. Nowhere 
perhaps can we see the new spirit so self-con- 
scious as in some of the letters of Niebuhr. 

But a stricter standard of truth and new 
methods for the purpose of ascertaining truth 



13 
were not enough to detach history from her 
old moorings. A new transfiguring conception 
of her scope and limits was needed, if she was 
to become an independent science. Such a 
conception was waiting to intervene, but I may 
lead up to it by calling to your recollection how 
history was affected by the political changes 
of Europe. 

It was a strange and fortunate coincidence 
that the scientific movement in Germany should 
have begun simultaneously with another move- 
ment which gave a strong impetus to historical 
studies throughout Europe and enlisted men's 
emotions in their favour. The saying that the 
name of hope is remembrance was vividly 
illustrated, on a vast scale, by the spirit of 
resurgent nationality which you know has 
governed, as one of the most puissant forces, 
the political course of the last century, and is 
still unexhausted. When the peoples, inspired 
by the national idea, were stirred to mould their 
destinies anew, and, looking back with longing 



14 

to the more distant past, based upon it their 
claims for independence or for unity, history 
was one of the most effective weapons in their 
armouries ; and consequently a powerful motive 
was supplied for historical investigation. The 
inevitable result was the production of some 
crude uncritical histories, written with national 
prejudice and political purpose, redeemed by the 
genuine pulse of national aspiration. But in 
Germany the two movements met. Scientific 
method controlled, while the national spirit 
quickened, the work of historical research. One 
of the grave dangers was the temptation to fix 
the eyes exclusively on the inspiring and golden 
periods of the past, and it is significant to find 
Dahlmann, as early as 1812, warning against 
such a tendency, and laying down that the 
statesman who studies national history should 
study the whole story of his forefathers, the 
whole developement of his people, and not 
merely chosen parts. 

But the point which concerns us now is that 



15 
the national movements of Europe not only 
raised history into prominence and gave a great 
impulse to its study, but also partially disclosed 
where the true practical importance of history 
lies. When men sought the key of their national 
development not in the immediate but in the 
remoter past, they had implicitly recognised in 
some measure the principles of unity and con- 
tinuity. That recognition was a step towards 
the higher, more comprehensive, and scientific 
estimation of history's practical significance, 
which is only now beginning to be under- 
stood. 

Just let me remind you what used to be 
thought in old days as to the utility of history. 
The two greatest of the ancient historians, 
Thucydides and Polybius, held that it might be 
a guide for conduct, as containing examples and 
warnings for statesmen ; and it was generally 
regarded in Greece and at Rome as a storehouse 
of concrete instances to illustrate political and 
ethical maxims. Cicero called history in this 



i6 

sense magistra vitae^ and Dionysius designated 
it ' Philosophy by exaniples.' And this view, 
which ascribed to it at best the function of 
teaching statesmen by analogy, at worst the 
duty of moral edification, prevailed generally 
till the last century. Of course it contained a 
truth which we should now express in a different 
form by saying that history supplies the material 
for political and social science. This is a very 
important function; but, if it were the only 
function, if the practical import of history lay 
merely in furnishing examples of causes and 
effects, then history, in respect of practical 
utility, would be no more than the handmaid 
of social science. 

And here I may interpolate a parenthesis, 
which even at this hour may not be quite 
superfluous. 1(1 may remind you that history is 
not a branch of literature. The facts of history, 
like the facts of geology or astronomy, can 
supply material for literary art ; for manifest 



17 

reasons they lend themselves to artistic repre- 
sentation far more readily than those of the 
natural sciences ; but to clothe the story of a 
human society in a literary dress is no more the 
part of a historian as a historian, than it is the 
part of an astronomer as an astronomer to 
present in an artistic shape the story of the 
stars. Take, for example, the greatest living 
historian. The reputation of Mommsen as a 
man of letters depends on his Roman History ; 
but his greatness as a historian is to be sought 
far less in that dazzling work than in the Corpus 
and the Staatsrecht and the Chronicles. 

This, by way of parenthesis ; and now to 
resume. A right notion of the bearing of history 
on affairs, both for the statesman and for the 
citizen, could not be formed or formulated 
until men had grasped the idea of human 
developement. This is the great transforming 
conception, which enables history to define 
her scope. The idea was first started by 
Leibnitz, but, though it had some exponents 

B. 2 



i8 

in the interval, it did not rise to be a govern- 
ing force in human thought till the nineteenth 
century, when it appears as the true solvent 
of the anti-historical doctrines which French 
thinkers and the French Revolution had 
arrayed against the compulsion of the past. 
At the same time, it has brought history into 
line with other sciences, and, potentially at 
least, has delivered her from the political and 
ethical encumbrances which continued to 
impede her after the introduction of scientific 
methods. For notwithstanding those new 
engines of research, she remained much less, 
and much more, than a science in Germany, 
as is illustrated by the very existence of all 
those bewildering currents and cross-currents, 
tendencies and counter-tendencies, those various 
schools of doctrine, in which Lord Acton was 
so deeply skilled. The famous saying of 
Ranke — " Ich will nur sagen wie es eigentlich 
gewesen ist " — was widely applauded, but it 
was little accepted in the sense of a warning 



19 

against transgressing the province of facts ; it 
is a text which must still be preached, and 
when it has been fully taken to heart, though 
there be many schools of political philosophy, 
there will no longer be divers schools of 
history. 

The world is not yet alive to the full im- 
portance of the transformation of history (as 
part of a wider transformation) which is being 
brought about by the doctrine of develope- 
ment. It is always difficult for those who are 
in immediate proximity to realise the decisive 
steps in intellectual or spiritual progress when 
those steps are slow and gradual ; but we need 
not hesitate to say that the last century is not 
only as important an era as the fifth century B.C. 
in the annals of historical study, but marks, 
like it, a stage in the growth of man's self- 
consciousness. There is no passage, perhaps, 
in the works of the Greek tragedians so in- 
structive for the historical student as that song 
in the Antigone of Sophocles, in which we seem 

2 2 



20 

to surprise the first amazed meditation of man 
when it was borne in upon him by a sudden 
startHng illumination, how strange it is that he 
should be what he is and should have wrought 
all that he has wrought, — should have wrought 
out, among other things, the city-state. He 
had suddenly, as it were, waked up to realise 
that he himself Vv^as the wonder of the world. 
OvBev heivorepov ireXei. That intense expression 
of a new detached wondering interest in man, 
as an object of curiosity, gives us the clue to 
the inspiration of Herodotus and the birth of 
history. More than two thousand years later 
human self-consciousness has taken another 
step, and the "sons of flesh" have grasped the 
notion of their upward developement through 
immense cycles of time. This idea has re- 
created history. Girded with new strength 
she has definitely come out from among her 
old associates, moral philosophy and rhetoric ; 
she has come out into a place of liberty ; and 
has begun to enter into closer relations with 



21 

the sciences which deal objectively with the 
facts of the universe. 

/The older view, which we may call the 
politico-ethical theory, naturally led to eclecti- 
cism. Certain periods and episodes, which 
seemed especially rich in moral and political 
lessons, were picked out as pre-eminently and 
exclusively important, and everything else was 
regarded as more or less the province of anti- 
quarianism. This eclectic and exclusive view is 
not extinct, and can appeal to recent authority. 
It is remarkable that one of the most eminent 
English historians of the latter half of the last 
century, whose own scientific work was a model 
for all students, should have measured out the 
domain of history with the compasses of political 
or ethical wisdom, and should have protested 
as lately as 1877 against the principle of unity 
and continuity. That inconsistency is an illus- 
tration of the tenacity with which men cling 
to predilections that are incongruous with the 



V 



- :^ 

dbe Iwtorf of dK ? 



/ .f CMlwBtr asac? 



U: it is of Tital isoir 
: ^ tmc imwiii'iiw* cii 

and to «e h r. i 

mfhence c -ad 

exerted in r^bt ciir : 



23 



opinions ar.i g the course of e^'ents. 

It would be an instructive task to :^:^:r this 
influrr.ie ^ri trace it firom its most r 
foim ir. e times, \\-her- zr.t .: 

tribes were 

througti -iter s^res in which p: tre 

dicti:r: - - ed by historical judgments 

anc But the c.t^r rt ' of 

i::r conception ' t^r is itself 

c - ictor in guiding - i -jlding our 

T ' Tiust become : ^:* greater 

-tenc\% TD'^: — _ :irw stage in 
man mind. And it supplies 
- i/iy of the prs.ctical import- 
er. :e ifhistoiy. 

I: saems inevitable that, as this truth is mcM^ 
Tfldy though slowly realised, the 
: :)ry occupies in national educa- 
tion will grow larger and laiger. It is therefore 
of s-icrer-.e niooient that : ry which is 



24 

taught should be true ; and that can be attained 
only through the discovery, collection, classi- 
fication, and interpretation of facts, — through 
scientific research. The furtherance of research, 
which is the highest duty of Universities, requires 
ways and means. Public money is spent on the 
printing and calendaring of our own national 
records ; but we ought not to be satisfied with 
that. Every little people in Europe devotes 
sums it can far less well afford to the investi- 
gation of its particular history. We want a much 
larger recognition of the necessity of historical 
research ; a recognition that it is a matter of 
public concern to promote the scientific study 
of any branch of history that any student is 
anxious to pursue. Some statesmen would 
acknowledge this ; but in a democratic state 
they are hampered by the views of unenlightened 
taxpayers. The wealthy private benefactors 
who have come forward to help Universities, 
especially in America, are deplorably short- 
sighted ; they think too much of direct results 



25 
and immediate returns ; they are unable to 
realise that research and the accumulated work 
of specialists may move the world. In the 
meantime, the Universities themselves have much 
to do ; they have to recognise more fully and 
clearly and practically and preach more loudly 
and assiduously that the advancement of research 
in history, as in other sciences, is not a luxury, 
subsidiary though desirable, but is a pressing 
need, a matter of inestimable concern to the 
nation and the world. 

It must also be remembered that a science 
cannot safely be controlled or guided by a sub- 
jective interest. This brings me to the question 
of perspective in ecumenical history. From the 
subjective point of view, for our own contem- 
porary needs, it may be held that certain 
centuries of human developement are of a 
unique and predominant importance, and pos- 
sess, for purposes of present utility, a direct 
value which cannot be claimed for remoter ages. 



26 

But we should not forget that this point of view 
if legitimate and necessary, in one sense, is 
subjective, and unscientific. It involves a false 
perspective. The reason is not merely the 
brevity of the modern age in comparison with 
the antecedent history of man ; it is a larger 
consideration than that. 

In his inaugural lecture at Oxford sixty 
years ago^ Arnold propounded as his conviction 
the view that what we call the modern age 
coincides with " the last step " in the story of 
man. "It appears," he said, "to bear marks of 
the fulness of time, as if there would be no 
future history beyond it." He based this view 
on the ground that one race had followed another 
in the torch-bearing progress of civilisation, and 
that after the Teuton and the Slav, who are 
already on the scene, there exists on earth no 
new race fitted to come forward and succeed to 
the inheritance of the ages. This argument rests 
on unproven assumptions as to the vital powers 
1 1841. 



27 

and capacities of races, and as to the importance 
of the ethnical factor in man's developement. 
The truth is that at all times men have found 
a difficulty in picturing how the world could 
march onward ages and ages after their own 
extinction. And this difficulty has prejudiced 
their views. We may guess that if it had been 
put to a king of Egypt or Babylonia 6000 years 
ago, he would have said that his own age repre- 
sented the fulness of days. The data to which 
Arnold appealed are insufficient even to establish 
a presumption. The only data which deserve 
to be considered are the data furnished by 
cosmic science. And science tells us that — 
apart from the incalculable chances of cata- 
strophes — man has still myriads and myriads 
of years to live on this planet under physical 
conditions which need not hinder his develope- 
ment or impair his energies. That is a period 
of which his whole recorded history of six or 
seven thousand years is a small fraction. 

The dark imminence of this unknown future 



28 

in front of us, like a vague wall of mist, every 
instant receding, with all its indiscernible contents 
of world-wide change, soundless revolutions, 
silent reformations, undreamed ideas, new re- 
ligions, must not be neglected, if we would grasp 
the unity of history in its highest sense. For 
though we are unable to divine what things 
indefinite time may evolve, though we cannot 
look forward with the eyes of 

" the prophetic soul 
Of the wide world brooding on things to come," 

yet the unapparent future has a claim to make 
itself felt as an idea controlling our perspective. 
It commands us not to regard the series of what 
we call ancient and medieval history as leading 
up to the modern age and the twentieth century; 
it bids us consider the whole sequence up to the 
present moment as probably no more than the 
beginning of a social and psychical developement, 
whereof the end is withdrawn from our view by 
countless millenniums to come. All the epochs 
of the past are only a few of the front carriages, 



29 

and probably the least wonderful, in the van of 
an interminable procession. 

This, I submit, is a controlling idea for 
determining objectively our historical perspec- 
tive. We must see our petty periods sub specie 
pei'ennitatis. Under this aspect the modern age 
^falls into line with its predecessors and loses its 
obtrusive prominence. Do not say that this 
view sets us on too dizzy a height. On the 
contrary, it is a supreme confession of the limi- 
tations of our knowledge. It is simply a 
limiting and controlling conception; but it makes 
all the difference in the adjustment of our mental 
balance for the appreciation of values, — like the 
symbol of an unknown quantity in the denomi- 
nator of a fraction. It teaches us that history 
ceases to be scientific, and passes from the 
objective to the subjective point of view, if she 
does not distribute her attention, so far as the 
sources allow, to all periods of history. It 
cannot perhaps be too often reiterated that a 
University, in the exercise and administration 



30 

of learning, has always to consider that more 
comprehensive and general utility which consists 
in the training of men to contemplate life and 
the world from the highest, that is the scien- 
tifically truest point of view, in the justest 
perspective that can be attained. If one were 
asked to define in a word the end of higher 
education, I do not know whether one could 
find a much better definition than this : the 
training of the mind to look at experience 
objectively, without immediate relation to one's 
own time and place. And so, if we recognise 
the relative importance of the modern period for 
our own contemporary needs, we must hold that 
the best preparation for interpreting it truly, for 
investigating its movements, for deducing its 
practical lessons, is to be brought up in a school 
where its place is estimated in scales in which 
the weight of contemporary interest is not 
thrown. 

Beyond its value as a limiting controlling 



31 
conception, the idea of the future developement 
of man has also a positive importance. It 
furnishes in fact the justification of much of 
the laborious historical work that has been 
done and is being done to-day. The gathering 
of materials bearing upon minute local events, 
the collation of MSS. and the registry of their 
small variations, the patient drudgery in archives 
of states and municipalities, all the microscopic 
research that is carried on by armies of toiling 
students — it may seem like the bearing of 
mortar and bricks to the site of a building 
which has hardly been begun, of whose plan 
the labourers know but little. This work, the 
hewing of wood and the drawing of water, has 
to be done in faith — in the faith that a complete 
assemblage of the smallest facts of human history 
will tell in the end. The labour is performed for 
posterity — for remote posterity; and when, with 
intelligible scepticism, someone asks the use of 
the accumulation of statistics, the publication 
of trivial records, the labour expended on 



32 
minute criticism, the true answer is : " That 
is not so much our business as the business 
of future generations. We are heaping up 
material and arranging it, according to the 
best methods we know ; if we draw what con- 
clusions we can for the satisfaction of our own 
generation, we never forget that our work is 
to be used by future ages. It is intended for 
those who follow us rather than for ourselves, 
and much less for our grandchildren than for 
generations very remote." For a long time to 
come one of the chief services that research 
can perform is to help to build, firm and solid, 
some of the countless stairs by which men of 
distant ages may mount to a height unattain- 
able by us and have a vision of history which 
we cannot win, standing on our lower slope. 

But if we have to regard the historical 
labours of man, for many a century to come, 
as the ministrations of a novitiate, it does not 
follow that we should confine ourselves to the 
collection and classification of materials, the 



33 
technical criticism of them, and the examination 
of special problems ; it does not follow that the 
constructive works of history which each age 
produces and will continue to produce according 
to its lights may not have a permanent value. 
It may be said that like the serpents of the 
Egyptian enchanters they are perpetually 
swallowed up by those of the more potent 
magicians of the next generation ; but — apart 
from the fact that they contribute themselves 
to the power of the enchantment which over- 
comes them — it is also true that though they 
may lose their relative value, they abide as 
milestones of human progress ; they belong to 
the documents which mirror the form and 
feature of their age, and may be part of the 
most valuable material at the disposal of 
posterity. If we possessed all the sources which 
Tacitus used for his sketch of the early imperial 
period, his Annals would lose its value in one 
sense, but it would remain to the furthest verge 
of time a monument of the highest significance, 

B. 3 

LofC. 



34 

in its treatment, its method and its outlook, for 
the history of the age in which he lived. When 
the ultimate history of Germany in the nineteenth 
century comes to be written, it will differ widely 
from Treitschke's work, but that brilliant book 
can never cease to be a characteristic document 
of its epoch. 

The remarks which I have ventured to offer 
are simply deductions from the great principle 
of developement in time, which has given 
a deep and intense meaning to the famous 
aphorism of Hippocrates, that Science is long, 
a maxim so cold and so inspiring. The humblest 
student of history may feel assured that he is 
not working only for his own time ; he may feel 
that he has an interest to consult and a cause to 
advance beyond the interest and cause of his 
own age. And this does not apply only to 
those who are engaged in research. It applies 
also to those who are studying history without 
any intention of adding to knowledge. Every 
individual who is deeply impressed with the 



35 
fact that man's grasp of his past developement 
helps to determine his future developement, and 
who studies history as a science not as a branch 
of literature, will contribute to form a national 
conscience that true history is of supreme im- 
portance, that the only way to true history lies 
through scientific research, and that in promoting 
and prosecuting such research we are not in- 
dulging in a luxury but doing a thoroughly 
practical work and performing a great duty 
to posterity. 

One of the features of the renovation of the 
study of history has been the growth of a larger 
view of its dominion. Hitherto I have been 
dwelling upon its longitudinal aspect as a 
sequence in time, but a word may be said about 
its latitude. The exclusive idea of political 
history, Staatengeschichte, to which Ranke held 
so firmly, has been gradually yielding to a more 
comprehensive definition which embraces as its 
material all records, whatever their nature may 



36 

be, of the material and spiritual developement, 
of the culture and the works, of man in society, 
from the stone age onwards. It may be said 
that the wider view descends from Herodotus, 
the narrower from Thucydides. The growth 
of the larger conception was favoured by the 
national movements which vindicated the idea 
of the people as distinct from the idea of the 
state ; but its final victory is assured by the 
application of the principle of developement and 
the "historical method" to all the manifestations 
of human activity — social institutions, law, trade, 
the industrial and the fine arts, religion, philo- 
sophy, folklore, literature. Thus history has 
acquired a much ampler and more comprehensive 
meaning, along with a deeper insight into the 
constant interaction and reciprocity among all 
the various manifestations of human brain-power 
and human emotion. Of course in actual practice 
labour is divided ; political history and the 
histories of the various parts of civilisation can 
and must be separately treated ; but it makes a 



Z7 
vital difference that we should be alive to the 
interconnexion, that no department should be 
isolated, that we should maintain an intimate 
association among the historical sciences, that 
we should frame an ideal — an ideal not the less 
useful because it is impracticable — of a true 
history of a nation or a true history of the world 
in which every form of social life and every 
manifestation of intellectual developement should 
be set forth in its relation to the rest, in its 
significance for growth or decline. 

Cambridge has officially recognised this wider 
view of history by the name and constitution of 
the body which administers historical studies — 
the "Board of Historical and Archaeological 
Studies." If that branch of historical research 
which we call archaeology bears a distinct name 
and occupies its distinct place, it is simply 
because the investigation of the historical records • 
with which it deals requires a special training of 
faculties of observation not called into play in 
the study of written documents. But it must 



38 

not be forgotten that the special historian whom 
we call an archaeologist needs a general training 
in history and a grasp of historical perspective 
as much as any other historical specialist. It 
must be borne in mind that this, as well as his 
special scientific training, is needed to differ- 
entiate the archaeologist from the antiquarian 
of the prescientific Oldbuck type, who in the 
first place has no wide outlook on history, and 
secondly cannot distinguish between legitimate 
profitable hypotheses and guesses which are 
quite from the purpose. Such antiquarians 
have not yet disappeared. It is significant 
that two brilliant historians, to both of whom 
the study of history in this country is deeply 
indebted, built perilous superstructures in regard 
to the English Conquest upon speculations 
which were only superior specimens of the pre- 
scientific type. It is earnestly to be wished 
that the history schools of the Universities 
may turn out a new kind of critical anti- 
quarians in Britain who instead of molesting 



39 

their local monuments with batteries of irrelevant 
erudition and fanciful speculation, with volleys 
of crude etymologies, will help to further our 
knowledge of British history, coming with a 
suitable equipment to the arduous, important 
and attractive task of fixing, grouping, and 
interpreting the endless fragments of historical 
wreckage which lie scattered in these islands. 
I venture to insist with some emphasis on this, 
because there are few fields where more work is 
to be done or where labourers are more needed 
than the Celtic civilisations of Western Europe. 
In tracing from its origins the course of western 
history in the Middle Ages, we are pulled up 
on the threshold by the uncertainties and ob- 
scurities which brood over the Celtic world. 
And for the purpose of prosecuting that most 
difficult of all inquiries, the ethnical problem, 
the part played by race in the developement of 
peoples and the effects of race blendings, it 
must be remembered that the Celtic world 
commands one of the chief portals of ingress 



40 

into that mysterious prae-Aryan foreworld, from 
which it may well be that we modern Europeans 
have inherited far more than we dream. For 
pursuing these studies it is manifest that scholars 
in the British islands are in a particularly favour- 
able position. 

Most beginners set to work at the study 
which attracts them, and follow the lines that 
have been constructed for them, without any 
clear apprehension or conviction of the greater 
issues involved. That apprehension only comes 
to them afterwards, if indeed it ever comes. It 
has seemed to me that it might not be amiss if 
historical students, instead of merely taking the 
justification of their subject for granted, were 
brought at the outset to consider its significance 
and position from the highest point of view, — if 
they were stimulated to apprehend vividly that 
the study of history and the method of studying 
it are facts of ecumenical importance. In at- 
tempting to illustrate this — very inadequately in 



41 
the small compass of an introductory address, — 
I have sought to indicate the close interconnexion 
between the elevation of history to the position 
of a science and the recognition of the true 
nature of its practical significance as being itself 
a factor in evolution. 

I may conclude by repeating that, just as he 
will have the best prospect of being a successful 
investigator of any group of nature's secrets who 
has had his mental attitude determined by a 
large grasp of cosmic problems, even so the 
historical student should learn to realise the 
human story stib specie perennitatis ; and that, if, 
year by year, history is to become a more and 
more powerful force for stripping the bandages 
of error from the eyes of men, for shaping public 
opinion and advancing the cause of intellectual 
and political liberty, she will best prepare her 
disciples for the performance of that task, not 
by considering the immediate utility of next 
week or next year or next century, not by 
accommodating her ideal or limiting her range, 



42 

but by remembering always that, though she 
may supply material for literary art or philo- 
sophical speculation, she is herself simply a 
science, no less and no more. 



CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



1. J 



